Email Gateway to the World Wide Web

EmailWeb has been discontinued for lack of funding.

Purpose

EmailWeb is an Internet service that delivers fully formatted web pages by email.  Many people who would not otherwise be able to access the web are able to by using EmailWeb. People have this need for a variety of reasons.

Some users of EmailWeb are located on computer networks that do not fully comply with current internet standards and as a result are able to use email, but cannot access the web. EmailWeb enables them to access the web via email. EmailWeb has users in India who have this need.

Some users of EmailWeb are located on computer networks where they must pay excessive connect charges when on-line. The web is too expensive for them to use, because they must pay connect charges while they are reading web pages. EmailWeb enables them to read pages off-line, and only pay for on-line connect charges while requesting and receiving pages. EmailWeb has users in Africa who have this need.

Some users of EmailWeb have a connection to the Internet that is too slow for browser use.  Instead, of sitting idle as each page is transmitted into their browser, these users of EmailWeb are able to make numerous requests by email at one time, and read responses to their requests without interruption.  EmailWeb does not speed delivery, but enables them to read requested web pages while other web pages are arriving by email.  EmailWeb has users in Asia who have this need.

Some users of EmailWeb have chosen to purchase an email account, but for economic reasons have chosen not to purchase web access. These email users can access the web by email. EmailWeb has users in the US who are juno.com subscribers who have this need.

Some users of EmailWeb have chosen not to use the web directly as a matter of conscience. Many of these same people do use email, and some are using EmailWeb as their gateway to the web. These users find EmailWeb to be a safe way to access the web, because web searches are filtered, and popups will not display in an email program. EmailWeb has users in the US and Canada who have this need.

Some users of EmailWeb are new to computers, and have little understanding of email and no understanding of web. Because EmailWeb is very simple to use, it is a good place for them to start. EmailWeb has users in remote locations of the Solomon Islands who have this need.

Restrictions

EmailWeb may only be used for legal purposes. This restriction includes a complete ban against the use of EmailWeb to download pornography. Whenever an illegal use of EmailWeb is identified, that user will be blocked from further use of this service. Further requests by that user will only result in an error stating the user is in the 'badmailfrom' list.

Content Filtering

People concerned about having a safe internet experience will find that EmailWeb delivers a better experience both by filtering content and because an email program is safer than a browser.

The EmailWeb search capability uses the most restrictive content filtering that Google provides. The EmailWeb getpage capability performs no additional filtering. But, as long as one is using getpage to access pages discovered by the search, the pages accessed will be those filtered during the search.

Using an email program to view web content provides a much safer experience than does a browser partly because popup windows do not work with email programs. In addition, browsers can become infected by activeX controls that will download and display pages that were never requested. To date, we have not seen an instance where an email program has been similarily infected.

Performance

Emailweb is usually able to compile a response to your request in 2 to 10 seconds. The time to deliver the response to you will be less than 1 minutes within the US, but increases to many minutes in the remote locations of the world.

Requirements

You will need a recent version of a quality email program.   No additional software has to be installed on your computer.  The following are compatible with emailweb:

Windows

• Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, version 5.0 and above
• Netscape Communicator, version 4.7 and above
• Qualcomm Eudora Pro, version 4.2.2 and above
• The Bat!, version 2
• Pine, version 4.2 and above
• Juno, version 4.05 and above
• Hotmail, since April 2000
• Yahoo Mail, since April 2000
• KOM 2000, version 3.0 and above

Linux

• Netscape 7.1 and above. (not Mozilla)

How to use search

To perform a search, send an email message to search@emailweb.us by clicking on this link, and type your search request into the subject line.  Enter your search request exactly as you would in Google, because emailweb uses the Google search engine.

When the search results return to you by email, click on any link on the page and it will send emailweb a request for that page.

How to get web pages

To receive any page on the internet, send an email message to getpage@emailweb.us with the web address of the page you want on the subject line.   Click on the link above and enter a website address in its subject line. For example, try www.cnn.com

Click on any link on the returned page, and it will send an email request for that page.

How to submit forms

When a page that has been received from emailweb contains input fields, buttons, or checkboxes; you can complete the form and click the submit button. A compatible email program will send your entries to emailweb, which will process your input, and return the website's results to you by email.

Users who have more than one email program on their computer, may have difficulty with this feature. The submit form capability is only going to work in conjunction with the email program that is set as the "Default Mail Client" in your "Internet Options" control panel. Either change the default to the email program you use. Or, use the default email client when using emailweb.

Unfortunately, this feature will not work with secure forms that are present on https pages. Forms on such pages require end to end encryption, because they are used to send confidential information. It is not currently feasible for emailweb to provide end-to-end encryption.

Privacy Policy

Each request to emailweb is logged, by recording the date, time, page requested or search performed, the email address that requested it, and an error message if an error occurred.  This information is gathered solely to help identify and correct problems in our software.  The page is recorded so that we can investiate the problem if we see that you received an error.  Your email address is recorded, so that we are able to ask about your experience using this service.  None of this information will be used for any other purpose, or given to anyone.

Terms of Use

User's of this service are required to abide by laws about abusive and profane content.  We at emailweb take this very seriously, because each request a user makes to emailweb, becomes a request that emailweb makes to the actual web server.  If a user is requesting illegal content, then that user is making emailweb a participant in their abuse.  Consequently, all such users will be discontinued when they are identified.  Discontinued users will receive an error message with each request stating they are in the 'badmailfrom' list.

Frequently, new users to emailweb do not receive responses, because there is a spam filter at their ISP ( or on their own computer ) that is blocking the response.  Because emailweb responses are large and complex web pages, they are recognized by spam filters as email that is too complex for personal use, and it assumes it is spam.  The solution to this problem is for the user to request that their ISP add the domain 'emailweb.us' to their whitelist.  Please mention to them that Emailweb only sends email in direct response to user request.

Emailweb is a software server that is partially custom written, and partially uses prexisting software.  Both the custom written and prexisting software have been tested, but are not perfect.  Emailweb is intended to deliver web pages and searches that will display in an email program as close as possible to how the same pages would display in a browser. Unfortunately, sometimes pages are not accessible, or do not display properly. This can occur because of bugs in the emailweb software, or because of limitations in your email program, or because of bugs in the web pages, or interruptions of service at the source web site, or combinations of these three.  Please do send us specific information on any web pages that do not work correctly.

Currently, script errors are a consistent problem for some users. As mentioned above these can be a result of limitations in your email client, errors in the scripts, or bugs in emailweb. The best solution at this time is to turn-off javascript and other scripts in your email program's preferences.

Security

It is currently a limitation of emailweb, that it is blocking the use of secure forms, such as are used to transmit usernames, passwords, banking pins, and credit card numbers. This is intentional, because email is a very insecure means of communication. Emails are often scanned in transit by hackers for the specific purpose of collecting passwords, banking pins, and credit card numbers.

There are many complexities that make internet crime a significant problem. One of the key problems is that the offenders can be located anywhere in the world, and be operating under a govenment that would be little help with prosecution of a crime. In addition, the internet gives offenders an anonymity that makes them very difficult to locate.

At some time in the future, we hope to provide the ability to send encrypted requests to emailweb, and receive encrypted responses. However, the deployment of this capability will wait until emailweb's own internal security is extremely resistent to attack.

Request for feedback

Contact

Gary N. Griswold
EmailWeb
Albany, NY USA
and Boston, MA USA
gary@shortsands.us
Resume

Related Work

Satellife - Satellife, a global health information network in Watertown, MA, provides a web page delivery service called getweb, that delivers web pages in text form along with an index to all links on the page.

www4mail Project - Web Navigation & Database Search by E-Mail, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. This project, like emailweb, delivers web pages by email. It is intended primarily for scientific researchers with low-bandwidth connections to the internet. It has a large number of options that allow users to control their interaction with web servers and control the reponse they receive. However, www4mail does not deliver web pages formatted as they would appear in a browser, but delivers pages in a text format that approximates the original page and delivers links to images or image attachments.

MIT Tek Project - Time Equals Knowledge Project (TEK), Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Computer Science. This project accepts search requests, and delivers the web pages found in the search, rather than a page of search results. It delivers the text of the pages in fully formatted HTML, but to reduce bandwidth requirements, it does not deliver images and other components. This project keeps tracks of pages already sent to a user, and does not resend duplicates.

Acknowlegements

For the emailweb service, I am most indebted to the grace of God, who has given me the skill, time and energy to work on this project; and to the patience of my wonderful wife, Lois. Technically, I am most indebted to the Internet Engineering Task Force, and to the World Wide Web Consortium. Both of these organizations have made enormous contributions to the standards of email and web, which standards make this project feasible. I am also indebted to Google, who has permitted access to their search engine, to Sun Microsystems for their Java programming language, which was used to develop the emailweb service, to Daniel Bernstein for Qmail, which is used to receive and deliver emailweb messages, and to Red Hat and the entire Linux community for their operating system.

Old News

Updated

This page was last updated August 25th, 2004.